Other People (24 page)

And suddenly she realized: books
were
about the living world, the world of power, boredom and desire, the burning world. These books were just more candid about it than the others; but they all fawned and fed on the buyable present. What had she felt before? She felt that books were about the ideal world, where nothing was ideal but everything had ideality and the chance of moral spaciousness. And it wasn't so. She ran her eyes along the shelves with mordant pride. Books weren't special. Books were just like everything else.

Later that day Mary went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Slowly, before the long mirror, she took off all her clothes. Standing back and shaking her hair, she gazed at the malleable slopes of her body ... She looked posed, she looked awkward (by no means herself), but—yes, she looked good. Her solidly sculpted hair dropped down to the tips of her breasts, curving past the glowing throat. Were these breasts of hers good breasts? The shape and texture seemed pleasant enough—round and giving, without any sensation of fat—and there was something sore and meticulous about the nipples which she could imagine other people getting fond of. More or less exactly halfway between the shadowed undercurves of her breasts and the second line of hair lay the puckered and babyish eyelid of the navel, itself the central point of the shallow convexity that now flattened out on to the hinges of the hips, where the skin was weak, and tender veins were disclosed ... And then came this other crucial point, whose role in life was so much-discussed, so much-in-the-news, so revered, so prized. Protected by hair and a protuberance of bone, it too was made up of flesh and resilience. Feeling decidedly uneasy now, Mary looked closer. Yes, this was new all right, this was more. The skin was pink, intimate pink. There were various other creaturely things going on down there. Frankly, it didn't look too good down there to Mary. To tell you the truth, it looked pretty bad to Mary down there. But at least it wasn't permanently on view, which was more than you could say for its opposite number. And then the gleaming thighs swept off along their true lines. It's good, it's good, she thought, it must be good: it's all I've got. She slipped back into her clothes and unlocked the door. Jamie was walking past.

'Hi, Mary,' he said, and walked on.

What's wrong with me? she thought.

Mary asked the other girls.

She asked Lily.

'Nothing's wrong with
you
,' shouted Lily over Carlos's steady wail. Carlos wasn't crying, just testing the power and gurgliness of his screams. 'Quiet, darling, there's an angel. It seems that he's just... he's
had
all that. Oh Carlos, please stop it, please stop.'

It turned out that Lily and Jamie had been a couple, a long time ago.

'Why did you stop being one?' Mary asked.

'I wanted a baby and he didn't.'

'Oh I see.'

She asked Jo.

'What? With him? Yes, and if pigs had wings,' said Jo. Jo was unstrapping an explorer's outfit in favour of her tennis gear. 'He's just a little
wanker,
that's all. Could you pass those gyms?'

It turned out that Jo and Jamie had been a couple, a long time ago.

'Why did you stop being one?' Mary asked.

'Because he wasn't man enough to
work
at it. We had a massive construction-job to do on our relationship, and he just wasn't up to it.'

'Oh I see.'

She asked Augusta.

'Gome in. Close the door. I'm glad you asked me about this. There are some things I think you ought to know,' said Augusta.

For a long time they sat and talked on Augusta's glossy bed. The conversation was maddeningly jangled because Augusta kept taunting and conciliating various men on her battered telephone. She hadn't gone out much since the morning of the black eye. It was fading now through its spectrum of reds, but she still looked very high-minded about it. She drank vodka from a bottle dunked in a plastic bucket full of ice.

'Basically,' said Augusta, 'he's homosexual. And he's impotent. Narcissists always are.'

'Really?' said Mary.

'He hates women. He's terrified of them.'

'Then why does he have us all living here?'

'To oppress us. To oppress us with his sneers. Answer that, would you. Find out who it is first. Mm—yes all right.'

'... But he lets us do what we like,' resumed Mary, 'and gives us all the money we need.'

'That's
how he oppresses us.'

'But if he hates and fears us, why does he bother to oppress us?'

'I'm telling you the
truth
Mary,' said Augusta, with a glare of such baleful rectitude that Mary nodded quickly and turned away. 'Of course I suppose you know he masturbates? Oh answer that, would you. Ask who it is ... Oh all
right:

It turned out that Augusta and Jamie had been a couple, a long time ago.

'Why did you stop being one?' Mary asked.

'Over one stupid little fight! Can you believe it? I went to see him
every day
for three weeks at the clinic, and when he came out he said'—and here she let her mouth go floppy and lugubrious—,' "I'm fuckin fucking out". Can you believe it? Answer that. Ask... No! Oh all
right:

'...
Oh I see,' said Mary.

'From the first moment I saw him,' said Augusta, snapping a finger, 'I knew he'd lost his nerve. Like all men he's basically a pornographer. What do they
know?
What do
they feel? I
mean
really
feel? Nothing! Oh, they're just— Who?' Augusta reached out high-mindedly for the receiver and then whispered into it for a very long time.

For a while they talked about other things. They talked about the large farm in which Augusta would one day dwell, and the eight or nine children she would raise there.

Much later, Augusta said, 'I knew you ... before.'

'Really?' said Mary.

'What was your name... ?'

'Was it Amy?'

'Yes.'

Mary wasn't too alarmed. Perhaps Augusta was two girls too. After all, Jamie had told Mary that Augusta wasn't Augusta's real name either. Augusta's real name was Janice.

'We talked all night, and then we had scrambled eggs. You were strange.'

'I don't remember,' said Mary.

'Well I was quite drunk myself. But I'll
always
remember something you said. I've forgotten it now.'

'I see.'

'You were doing some strange things. With heavy men and ethnic guys and things like that. Then you'd ring up your parents.'

'What?'

'When you were with these ethnic guys.'

'Why?'

'Because you hated them.'

'Who?'

'Your parents. But really you had this one guy. This strange guy. For years and years. You said you'd never leave him. You ... I liked you more then.'

'Did you?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Yes. You were more... real.'

'Really?'

'Yes. I remember now what you said. You said you loved him so much you wouldn't mind if he killed you. Something like that. I'll never forget that.'

Augusta received two more telephone calls and finished the vodka. They talked about other things. They talked for a long time about the poems that Augusta very occasionally wrote late at night when she was especially drunk.

Mary walked through into the sitting-room. Augusta had fallen asleep in an unlikely posture and couldn't be moved. Jamie was asleep too, in front of the blankly buzzing television, with a book on his lap.

'Oh, man,' he said when Mary woke him.

'Are you all right?'

'Well I wouldn't go that far. Oh,
man'
he said, slowly rubbing his face with his hands. 'Whew. Well I'll—whoops. I'll just—ah! My...
ow.
Holy
shit.
Well I'll, I'll... Night!'

Mary watched him wheel and stumble from the room.

What's wrong with him? she thought.

• • •

Try this.

Policemen look suspicious to normal murderers. To the mature paedophile, a child's incurious glance is a leer of predatory salacity. In more or less the same way, live people are as good as dead to active necrophiles.

It is often extra affectionate to leave people you care about alone. Anyone who has ever walked into a lamppost knows that all speeds above nought miles per hour are really pretty fast, thanks.

Some people look at the sunset and can see only blood in the vampiric sky. And when at evening they see an airborne crucifix bearing down on them from the west, they just sigh and are thankful that another plane has escaped from hell.

If you don't feel a little mad sometimes, then I think you must be out of your mind. All cliches are true. No one knows what to do. Everything depends on your point of view.

• • •

'I'm depressed,' said Jamie the next morning.

Mary believed him. He was also cruelly hungover. He had drunk too much the night before. Mary speculated that people would never drink that much unless they were quite drunk already. Gulping tightly, and with the occasional twitch of his damp white cheeks, Jamie picked up a book and started to read. Mary watched him. After a few minutes Jamie laughed out loud. The laughter went to his head, and it hurt.

'Ow,' he said. 'God, that's really funny. God that's so
good.'
He reread the passage and began laughing again.
'Ow
,' he said.

'Let me see,' said Mary. She went over and sat on the arm of his chair.

'That bit. From there to there,' he said, pointing. 'This guy really wants to fuck the daughter,' he murmured thickly, 'but he's got to fuck the mother instead.'

Mary narrowed her eyes.

And so I torn-peeped across the hedges of years, into wan little windows. And when, by means of pitifully ardent, naively lascivious caresses, she of the noble nipple and massive thigh prepared me for the performance of my nightly duty, it was still a nymphet's scent that in despair I tried to pick up, as I cantered through the undergrowth of dark decaying forests.

Mary read it but she didn't laugh or smile. She could see it was funny, she could see all its delight. But she didn't laugh or smile. She turned to Jamie, invigorated by the expressionlessness of her own face.

He frowned and straightened up. Hurt showed in his hot eyes. 'I suppose you have to read the whole thing,' he said, and looked away.

Mary went to her room. In a sense she was appalled by what she had done. But it was no help being appalled. She would do the same thing again. What helped? Something did: the knowledge that she had a power. She decided she had better use it, since it was the only power at her disposal. And of course it was the power to make feel bad.

That day Mary could feel life losing its edge, and she was pleased. She looked at life and urged it to interest her, to perform some convulsion that would render it interesting. But of course life stayed inert, and she thought the less of it for that. She knew why, but this was no help, not to women. She was a woman and it was no help. She knew that it was no help, for instance, to know that she went a little mad for five days every month. She still went a little mad, five days, every month. She knew when it was she went a little mad, and knew when to expect it. But, boy, she didn't know she was a little mad while she was a little mad. Just think: if you're a woman you go a little mad for several years when the real age comes. Will I know it then? she wondered. Oh man ...
Women
are the other people, yes we are. We're deep-divers, every one. You face the surface tempest where you can thrash and shout, but we swim underwater all our lives.

Mary made Jamie feel bad by feeling bad herself. She concentrated on this feeling and it struck her with its purity. After a few days it seemed obvious, just, even admirable. God, Mary feels bad. Do you see how bad she's feeling? Mary condensed the world and its present into a settled haze above her head. She glowed with it, her new power. It was true, it was true; how could something be as intense as this and also false? If Jamie addressed a casual remark to her, she stared at him for several seconds and then turned away, her disdain so palpable and definitive that there was no need to disclose it with her eyes. If they crossed in the passage, Mary would halt and stand her ground, daring him to travel through her force field. One day as she left the sitting-room she heard Jamie say to Lily,
'Christ.
What the fuck's the matter with
Mary?'

Mary felt a rush of exultation at this open tribute to her power. She went back and stood in the doorway.